From the Jungle to the Deep

An American working in the jungles of Honduras gets word he's inherited 200 grand. The tricky part is getting back to Texas to claim it in 1944's Dangerous Passage. This short b-movie is a pretty inventive specimen.

Robert Lowery is pretty charming as Joe, the American in the big panama hat. He meets the equally charming Phyllis Brooks as down on her luck night club employee Nita Paxton, looking to finally purchase a ticket back to the states. She and Joe end up on the same crummy little passenger ship called the Merman after Joe finds himself running from a manslaughter rap.

The filmmakers seem to have been more charmed by Charles Ant as the sleazy go-between who breaks the news to Joe about the 200,000. He makes a coy comment on how valuable Joe's identification papers are and he spends the rest of the movie trying to get his hands on them. But there's another crooked plot afoot as the captain and first mate of the Merman are planning to scuttle the ship and claim the insurance.

The final act gets a bit silly but overall the film's a better than average appetiser or chaser for an A-picture.

To His Lady's Bower

For Valentine's Night, I chose something a little more tried and true and watched 1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood again. Now that's a romantic film, in the classical sense, and Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland certainly had chemistry.

How lovely is that scene where he visits her chambers? She's so innocent but clearly smart enough we know she knows what she's getting into. And somehow subsequent iterations have never managed anything like Flynn's blend of sauciness and gentleness.

I love de Havilland's shiny costumes and how every set was cavernous, as though it were a requirement in the '30s for every Hollywood set to be capable of supporting a massive dance number, should inspirations strike. I'd love to have a massive stone room with a fireplace big enough to be another room.

Being the king's ward certainly has its perks. Maid Marian does represent a fantasy of cultivation. Now the standard impression is that being raised in privilege inevitably corrupts a person but at one time people thought prudent, expensive upbringing could produce refinement. That's a lovely dream. No, it's not fair. But when has life ever been?

Some Enchanted Week

For Harrison Ford, 1998's Six Days, Seven Nights was just another in a string of lukewarm, forgettable films. For Anne Heche, who suffered a painful death after a horrific car accident last year, it was the biggest role of her career. It was directed by Ivan Reitman, who also died last year. Happy Valentine's Day, everyone.

Ford and Heche both give good performances that don't quite line up with their characters. Ford's famous for playing scoundrels but here he plays a horny scoundrel, something that tends to make a romantic lead much less attractive. It worked for Bill Murray in Ghostbusters but with Ford it's hard to shake the feeling he's Deckard play-acting to get into the Zhora's dressing room.

He and Anne Heche have no chemistry. Neither seems really into the other. I believe Heche as a high powered magazine editor. But there's something cold about her in the film and I can't imagine her being attracted to anyone. It doesn't help that not one single joke lands in this purported comedy. I never laughed. Some of the action adventure stuff, though, is pretty good and I wonder if this film would have done better if it'd given up on any idea of being a comedy.

I like how much practical effects were used and the location shooting. Ford, as a scoundrel pilot taking advantage of tourists, is arguably even closer to Charleton Heston's character in Secret of the Incas than he was in the Indiana Jones movies. He and Heche run afoul of pirates played by Temuera Morrison and Danny Trejo.

Impeccable casting there. I wish the film had focused more on fights with pirates.

Six Days, Seven Nights is available on Disney+ outside the US.

Twitter Sonnet #1669

With masks and masks we met the op'ra ghost.
Revolving canes precede the sausage joke.
Divergent routes commend our loopy host.
No wonder that the squeaky ride was broke.
Confections filled the box with testy frogs.
Advancing eyes were curled beyond a hope.
Euphoric futures pass behind the fogs.
Another night the Phantom ties a rope.
Rotund with hope, the plane began to climb.
Resurging sea would scrape the flyer down.
Emerging beasts resist the parent slime.
Ahead awaits the unsuspecting town.
Below the choppy plane the waves await.
Behind the slender years they offer bait.

Truth and the Nazi Hacienda

Nazis and man-eating dogs are chasing you through the jungle, but the real question is, do you really know the person running by your side? 1956's Run for the Sun sort of half-heartedly maintains a theme of truth in romance, the main appeal of the film being its production values, performances, and suspense. I'm not sure if the weak link is director Roy Boulting or screenwriter Dudley Nichols. A lack of chemistry between stars Richard Widmark and Jane Greer may also be at fault. But there's plenty to admire here. I could take a million screenshots that look like individual pulp covers.

The whole film was shot on location in Mexico, with much of it in jungles near Acapulco. Even the soundstage interiors were reportedly shot on Mexican soundstages. And they're well lit by cinematographer Joseph La Shelle.

That's not rear projection, Greer is in a real car in real Mexico.

The film begins with a magazine reporter, Katie (Greer), tracking down the reclusive novelist, Mike Latimer (Widmark), to where he's living, integrated into the life of a Mexican fishing village.

Mike spends his evenings in bed with a bottle, torturing himself about his inability to find truth in his writing, the character clearly being based on Hemingway. There's the start of something interesting in his inability to trust any perception of truth after his wife left him for another man but somehow this theme doesn't quite get off the ground.

Katie can't go through with her assignment to write a nasty expose on Mike. He insists on flying her to Mexico City in his little yellow plane. Unbeknownst to him, she has a magnetised notebook in her purse which she sets next to the dashboard compass, not realising she's throwing the two of them off course. I guess Mike can't even trust the laws of magnetism. If we take the purse to symbolise what it usually did for Hitchcock, a vagina, this plot detail becomes a little more interesting. What could throw Mike off-course into hot, steamy wilderness?

Individually, Widmark and Greer are fine, but there's just no sense of passion between the two. They certainly look passionate, hacking their way through foliage and muck.

Just look at that cinematography; all the shadows of those leaves and how subtly the eye is drawn to Greer's face.

The villain, played by Trevor Howard, somehow works out to be much more fascinating. He tries to conceal his true identity as a Nazi behind a natural geniality, but there's always a kind of carnivorous intensity in his eyes.

Run for the Sun is available on Amazon Prime.

On the Way to the Mines

Allan Quatermain calls himself timid and even a coward but that's somewhat contradicted by the fact that he leads the expedition of 1885's King Solomon's Mines across impassible deserts, through a lost civilisation, and finally into those dark and ancient mines of the title. It's a terrific and obviously influential adventure.

I'd heard it influenced Tolkien and it's very easy to see. Quatermain and his companions hire a man in Africa who turns out to secretly be the rightful king in exile of the secret Kukuana people, hidden across the desert. Allan and his companions receive indestructible chain mail shirts similar to the one of mithril Bilbo and Frodo wear. Of course, this all makes it sound a lot like Black Panther, too.

Like She, a big part of what makes King Solomon's Mines work is the narrator, in this case Allan Quatermain. He's natural and flawed, an unreliable narrator, at least in estimating himself. Author H. Rider Haggard never overplays it, though, allowing Allan to say something nice about himself now and then, as when he describes being able to go toe to toe with an enemy combatant in war before being knocked out like Bilbo in the battle at the end of The Hobbit.

Haggard does a masterful job building suspense around the politics of Kukuana and its sinister, imposter King Twala. When civil war erupts, Haggard's poetic language, and choice to make the Kukuana language translate as old-fashioned, courtly English, really gives it all a sense of epic proportions.

“Ah, these are men, indeed; they will conquer again,” called out Ignosi, who was grinding his teeth with excitement at my side. “See, it is done!”

Suddenly, like puffs of smoke from the mouth of a cannon, the attacking regiment broke away in flying groups, their white head-dresses streaming behind them in the wind, and left their opponents victors, indeed, but, alas! no more a regiment. Of the gallant triple line, which forty minutes before had gone into action three thousand strong, there remained at most some six hundred blood-spattered men; the rest were under foot. And yet they cheered and waved their spears in triumph, and then, instead of falling back upon us as we expected, they ran forward, for a hundred yards or so, after the flying groups of foemen, took possession of a rising knoll of ground, and, resuming their triple formation, formed a threefold ring around its base. And there, thanks be to Heaven, standing on the top of the mound for a minute, I saw Sir Henry, apparently unharmed, and with him our old friend Infadoos. Then Twala’s regiments rolled down upon the doomed band, and once more the battle closed in.

The Master of Deadly Wastes

A savage hatred between two brothers foments over a lifetime in Robert Louis Stevenson's 1889 novel The Master of Ballantrae. Gloomy and subtly psychological, this book's an admirable monster.

The story starts in 1745 and the two brothers are the children of a Scottish Laird of an estate called Durrisdeer. In a decision with results to rival a similar one by King Lear, the Laird decides to send one son to fight on the side of the Jacobites and have the other remain at home in support of the reigning King. A toss of a coin decides it'll be the elder son, James, the titular Master of Ballantrae, who goes off with the Jacobites and the younger, Henry, who'll remain at home.

Later, after he's become a pirate and is wandering the wilderness of New York, looking for a place to bury treasure, James will again toss a coin to make a decision, remarking on how it reflects his scorn for human reason.

Most of the story is told by a family servant called Mackellar, a man of high, rigid morals who regards the man he always refers to as "the Master" with fear and disgust. But the reader who looks beyond how Mackellar chooses to paint the picture will find the matter by no means so clear cut. The Master does abandon a mistress with an illegitimate child in Scotland and he perpetrates all manner of untold havoc as a pirate captain, a vocation he finds after various misadventures following the failure of the Jacobites. But Henry is not the paragon Mackellar makes him out to be from the start. The boys' father and the Master's former fiancee both pine for the man they presume dead while Henry conceals the Master's survival and repeated letters requesting money. Henry's bitterness at his father and the fiancee's enduring love for the elder brother manifest in Henry in negative colours. Seeing himself as a kind of martyr, he dutifully sends his brother money.

But Henry has married the fiancee, who still loved the presumed dead Master. And Henry now has everything the Master was meant to inherit. The Master may indeed be a scoundrel but he's also fully justified in feeling wronged.

It's tempting to look at the relationship between the two brothers as a metaphor for the conflict between the exiled Stuarts, responsible for the Jacobite uprising, and the Hanoverian family occupying the throne. Maybe Stevenson was inspired by his own readings from the 18th century that gave him a sense of the tides of loyalty. It doesn't quite match up, though, especially given how the Master's own loyalty to the Stuarts is hardly steadfast. The novel might bear some resemblance to Wuthering Heights, too, if the only female character were a little more fleshed out. As it is, she all but disappears from the narrative by the final act.

But what a wonderfully gloomy, catastrophic finale. By this point, even Mackellar's feelings about the brothers have become more complicated. I was enjoying the novel all along but my appreciation for it was raised considerably beginning with a section in which Mackellar accompanies the Master on a sea voyage from Scotland to New York on a rotting old ship called the Nonesuch. This paragraph alone is a masterpiece:

The wind fell, but the sea hove ever the higher. All night the Nonesuch rolled outrageously; the next day dawned, and the next, and brought no change. To cross the cabin was scarce possible; old experienced seamen were cast down upon the deck, and one cruelly mauled in the concussion; every board and block in the old ship cried out aloud; and the great bell by the anchor-bitts continually and dolefully rang. One of these days the Master and I sate alone together at the break of the poop. I should say the Nonesuch carried a high, raised poop. About the top of it ran considerable bulwarks, which made the ship unweatherly; and these, as they approached the front on each side, ran down in a fine, old-fashioned, carven scroll to join the bulwarks of the waist. From this disposition, which seems designed rather for ornament than use, it followed there was a discontinuance of protection: and that, besides, at the very margin of the elevated part where (in certain movements of the ship) it might be the most needful. It was here we were sitting: our feet hanging down, the Master betwixt me and the side, and I holding on with both hands to the grating of the cabin skylight; for it struck me it was a dangerous position, the more so as I had continually before my eyes a measure of our evolutions in the person of the Master, which stood out in the break of the bulwarks against the sun. Now his head would be in the zenith and his shadow fall quite beyond the Nonesuch on the farther side; and now he would swing down till he was underneath my feet, and the line of the sea leaped high above him like the ceiling of a room. I looked on upon this with a growing fascination, as birds are said to look on snakes. My mind, besides, was troubled with an astonishing diversity of noises; for now that we had all sails spread in the vain hope to bring her to the sea, the ship sounded like a factory with their reverberations. We spoke first of the mutiny with which we had been threatened; this led us on to the topic of assassination; and that offered a temptation to the Master more strong than he was able to resist. He must tell me a tale, and show me at the same time how clever he was and how wicked. It was a thing he did always with affectation and display; generally with a good effect. But this tale, told in a high key in the midst of so great a tumult, and by a narrator who was one moment looking down at me from the skies and the next up from under the soles of my feet—this particular tale, I say, took hold upon me in a degree quite singular.

He goes on to tell a story, supposedly a true one about a friend, but one that actually comes across as a hypothetical illustration, to challenge the hearer about the culpability of someone who psychologically manipulates someone else into a hazardous circumstance.

It's a lovely book. It's a nice appetiser for the Halloween season.

Twitter Sonnet #1625

The pair of masters met in swamp or snow.
Diminished minds digest in swollen hearts.
The distant dream was like a cherry glow.
A rigid servant plays the nicest parts.
A treasure waits forever near the grave.
A rancher knew the lovely carcass well.
Mistakes were hid to quell the tidy knave.
In godless lands the pirates dug to Hell.
The bandits ceased to climb the dusty rocks.
The booty fell below a twisted tree.
Implicit heists were held in haunted socks.
There's naught but sand as far as they can see.
A set of swords were crossed in brother brains.
Their treasure now a soulless land retains.

The Jungle Stone

My hankering for jungle movies led me to finally watching 1984's Romancing the Stone. I'd never really wanted to watch it because it seemed like a cheap Indiana Jones knock-off. That's not untrue, but may be a harsher description than it deserves. It's a romantic adventure film that was likely greenlit to capitalise on the success of Indiana Jones. I ought to celebrate the endeavour to make a good genre take root.

The story behind Romancing the Stone's creation is a little more interesting than I expected. First time screenwriter Diane Thomas wrote the script while working as a waitress. Actor Michael Douglas, who would go on to star in the film, saw the script and bought it for Columbia Pictures. Wikipedia quotes him as saying about Thomas, "She was not cautious. The script had a wonderful spirit about it. ... There was a total lack of fear to the writing. It worked." Which I would say is true. It feels a bit like fan-fiction. The character played by Kathleen Turner in the film is kind of a Mary Sue, an obvious avatar for Thomas in her fantasy about being swept off her feet while also earning admiration and respect.

The story is set in Colombia but was shot primarily in Mexico. Turner plays a successful romance novelist whose sister is kidnapped. Despite being a homebody with no practical survival skills, she marches straight from New York to Colombia to single-handedly rescue her sister for some reason. She's a bit clumsy and gets on the wrong bus and is forced to slog through jungles in her expensive heels, tearing her clothes. But experienced handsome man and bird collector (wink wink, nudge nudge) Jack T. Colton (Douglas) can't help but be charmed by her. Can Joan (Turner) see past her own pride to realise Jack is exactly like one of the roguish, but not too roguish, protagonists she always fantasised about in her novels about self-insert Mary Sues?

The movie's a self-insert fantasy about someone who writes self-insert fantasies. I have to love that little hall of mirrors.

I don't have anything against Mary Sues in the right context. What's wrong with a little disposable fantasy now and then? Jack and Joan, running through the jungle, occasionally running into trouble, treasure, or some of Joan's ravenous admirers, is put together nicely enough. It's great to see so much location footage in actual jungles. The film can't hold a candle to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which came out the same year, two months later, but it's a decent little appetiser.

Romancing the Stone is available on Hulu in the US and on Disney+ elsewhere.

Time of the Goonies

I didn't choose to watch 1985's The Goonies to honour the recently deceased Richard Donner. Like many Steven Spielberg produced movies of the '80s, it was really co-directed by Spielberg (Sean Astin apparently confirms this as regards The Goonies in his autobiography). It's hard to believe Mr. Schmaltzy, Squeaky Clean Spielberg of to-day ever made anything this raunchy. But it was the '80s, when filmmakers were interested in depicting kids the way kids actually are, crude sex jokes and all. It's a fun adventure film but among the weakest of Spielberg's '80s output. Then again, being among the weakest of Spielberg's '80s films is kind of like being one of the smallest titans.

I really don't think I'd seen the movie since the '80s. When I saw the first season of Stranger Things a few years ago, I made a mental note to go back and watch Goonies, but I didn't find that mental note until last night while perusing Netflix. I was recommending movies to be shown in class at the junior high school where I work in Nara Prefecture, Japan, and I was coming up with a list last night. I was going to include Goonies but now I realise I can't. The jokes about suicide and drugs would disqualify it. I'm astonished to find the film is still rated G on Netflix.

All the fat jokes about Chunk (Jeff Cohen) would seem like they'd make the movie deeply problematic in to-day's political climate in the West. It's some of the best stuff in the movie, though, and Jeff Cohen's comedic timing is razor sharp. I feel like Spielberg or Donner had him watch a bunch of Abbott and Costello.

Sean Astin is pretty good, too. That inhaler of his works like Sherlock Holmes' pipe or Columbo's cigar. It adds some kind of mystery to his sincere, straight-forward delivery. The movie has a real heartbeat in his conceptualisation of the group as "Goonies" and his building reverence for One-Eyed Willy. The climax has a pretty amazing, albeit historically inaccurate, pirate ship but it's Sean Astin that really sells it.

A wheel on a ship from 1635?

I love the gang of hoodlums chasing the kids, too, they have a real comic book vibe to them. I like Andy (Kerri Green) and her short tennis skirt she wears for the whole movie but they ought to have gone all the way making her Sean Astin's love interest instead of defaulting her with Josh Brolin.

The Goonies is available on Netflix.

I think I only saw it once or twice when I was a kid. I have stronger memories of playing the second Nintendo game over and over, though it bore pretty much no resemblance to the film.

The Not So Last Crusade

Still in the mood for old favourites last night, I watched 1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Although it is among my favourite films, it's my least favourite of the first three Indiana Jones films. For one thing, it's trying too hard to placate fans who didn't like Temple of Doom by aping Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's also strangely sloppy.

There are a lot of shot continuity problems, particularly in the tank chase scene which seems to be trying to outdo the great truck chase scene from the first film. There's the bit where Indy gets the strap of his gasmask bag caught on a gun--something it would seem impossible to do on accident since the strap is under his coat--and then he gets out of it just as impossibly over a cut. He loses his hat so many times in the fight, too, only for it to reappear on his head in the next shot. I found myself fantasising about alternate timelines emerging from each of these shots and elderly Indiana, years later, telling Mutt about how he used to have this really nice hat until a Nazi punched him on top of a tank one day.

It occurs to me Raiders of the Lost Ark is the only Indiana Jones movie not to have a father/son plot. Maybe the upcoming James Mangold movie will change that. I don't have high hopes for that movie. Mangold has produced a few good films and a lot of turkeys, nothing on the level of Last Crusade, let alone Raiders or Temple of Doom. Temple of Doom remains my favourite just in terms of tone and subject matter, though I recognise Raiders as probably better objectively.

I do love Sean Connery as Henry Jones Sr. He's nerdy yet virile. He's like Gary Cooper's character in Ball of Fire all grown up. I've criticised the film before, though, about how his dialogue switches between insightful and dopey. There's no excuse for that "11 o'clock!" dialogue on the plane. But then there are great lines like "It tells me that goose-stepping morons like you should try reading books instead of burning them!" It's pretty sad how frequently that line comes to mind nowadays.

I kind of feel like Elsa is short-changed. She's actually the most nuanced female character in any of the Indiana Jones films. She's with the Nazis but she cries at the book burning. She betrays Donavan but it's implied she deserves her fate when her avarice gets the better of her in her last moments. She's like an update of Belloq, a dark reflection of Indiana. I guess there just wasn't room in the movie for it but her role could have been bigger and more satisfying. Still, overall, good movie.

Twitter Sonnet #1457

The dark was parsed with rapid yellow lines.
Reflected silk recorded late appeared.
With nothing writ we blanked the passing signs.
The normal board presents the written weird.
A whistle ponders stone to make a horse.
Successful dresses wait in tiny shops.
Discarded flowers halt the river's course.
The record zings whenever static hops.
In desert valleys shadows fight for souls.
The music's faint from shattered diner horns.
The rusted spoon still rings in empty bowls.
Of heavy rain a new report f'warns.
Tenacious hats would keep the doctor's road.
A lot of bolts would hold the tractor's load.

The Emperor's New Nihilism

A selfish monarch learns to value the humanity of his subjects in Disney's animated film The Emperor's New Groove. Released in 2000, this film had been in development for over six years, during which time it profoundly changed form due to conflicting decisions and indecision from Disney management. What started as an epic romance, loosely patterned on The Prince and the Pauper, tonally similar to other Disney Renaissance films, became an oddly disposable comedy with brilliant animation reminiscent of Chuck Jones. It's not an easy film to watch and I found myself overcome by impatience around thirty minutes in. The problem is the main character, the titular Emperor voiced by David Spade, whose selfishness is such an ouroboros of self-parody he becomes a comedic black hole. The villains, voiced byPatrick Warburton and the great Eartha Kitt , fare much better, particularly Warburton's character, Kronk, but not quite enough to make this a movie I'd ever want to watch again.

Extreme selfishness can be funny. Think of how far Oscar Wilde got with it in his plays. I think the problem with Emperor Kuzco (Spade) is there's no real pleasure in the selfishness. There's a kind of ghostly smarm as he reclines on his throne and servants pile treasures about him. There's not even a sense of genuine sadism as he rejects a line of gorgeous brides. Nor is there a sense of genuine lust. He's just cruel without any sense of motive, not even for the pleasure of cruelty.

Eartha Kitt plays Yzma, advisor to the emperor, functioning less like Jaffar in Aladdin than like Jaffar in The Thief of Bagdad, another story about a monarch being deposed and magically cursed by his advisor. In that case, Prince Ahmed is not the most interesting character in his film but he's still engaging enough because we understand his motives right from the beginning.

Yzma is juxtaposed with Kuzco and the two are shown to be similar in their contempt for the peasantry. Yet Yzma's motives are much clearer--she desires the throne--and she takes delightful pleasure in her schemes. When Kitt was originally cast, there were to be musical numbers in the film similar to other Renaissance era films but ultimately The Emperor's New Groove went the same route as Tarzan and The Lion King, employing pop singers, in this case Sting and Tom Jones, to sing separately from the main characters. What a tragedy that Eartha Kitt didn't have a musical number. Jones plays "Theme Song Guy", giving us a humdrum musical number to introduce Kuzco, while Sting's song appears only in the end credits. He wrote a number of songs that were cut from the film and the song that does remain is so tonally at odds with the rest of the film I actually laughed when it started to play. It's like if "Feed the Birds" played at the end of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.

John Goodman has some natural warmth as Pacha, the peasant who ends up being Sabu to Kuzco's John Justin, but he's also a bit boring and the only interest to be had between he and Kuzco comes from the zaniness of the animation.

Some of it is so good it reminds me of the heyday of Disney and Warner Brothers shorts about Donald Duck or Bugs Bunny. One is reminded that the studios put the kind of effort in those shorts later reserved only for feature films.

Yzma is good but the only character who completely works is her henchman, Kronk, voiced by Patrick Warburton. He's just such a good natured lug that there's comedy inherent just in the fact that he's working for Yzma. And then he's oddly proficient--as when he accidentally takes over duties as a cook at a diner or reveals he can speak Squirrel.

The diner sequence is an example of how postmodern the humour is--which I think is the real reason Kuzco himself is so empty. He's too busy being a kind of character to be a character. It also means The Emperor's New Groove is kind of the anti-Pocahontas. There are no natives of Peru in the cast and there's no apparent attempt to honour Incan culture. On the one hand, I do think Disney needed to move away from the idiotic politics behind Pocahontas and some cartoonish anarchy is certainly a way to do that. But on the other hand, the humour in The Emperor's New Groove is often so obnoxious and empty, I feel like it left a hole in my stomach lining. At least Pocahontas and John Smith were sexy. The best The Emperor's New Groove can manage is one affable henchman and it's just not enough.

The Emperor's New Groove is available on Dinsey+.

...

This is part of a series of posts I'm writing on the Disney animated canon.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Pinocchio
Fantasia
Dumbo
Bambi
Saludos Amigos
The Three Caballeros
Make Mine Music
Fun and Fancy Free
Melody Time
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
Cinderella
Alice in Wonderland
Peter Pan
Lady and the Tramp
Sleeping Beauty
101 Dalmatians
The Sword in the Stone
The Jungle Book
The Aristocats
Robin Hood
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
The Rescuers
The Fox and the Hound
The Black Cauldron
The Great Mouse Detective
Oliver & Company
The Little Mermaid
The Rescuers Down Under
Beauty and the Beast
Aladdin
The Lion King
Pocahontas
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hercules
Mulan
Tarzan
Fantasia 2000
Dinosaur

The Affable King in Skins

From the woods of 18th century Tennessee emerged a simple hearted, plain spoken fellow. In the 19th century he was Indian fighter then Indian advocate but always Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier. That's what his friend George called him, anyway, and since he put it in a catchy song it stuck. The 1955 film is a compilation of the first three episodes of the Disney television series, shot in colour and in vast American forests. Fess Parker in the title role is a loveable straight shooter, his personality, perhaps appropriately, strikingly understated compared to his enthusiastic biographer played by Buddy Ebson.

In the first third of the film, Crockett is interrupted in his attempts to subdue a bear by grinning when he's called to duty under General Andrew Jackson (Basil Ruysdael). This is the Creek War and it'll be up to Davy to defeat the dreaded Chief Red Stick (Pat Hogan).

Despite his larger than life reputation, I like how the film shows Davy generally having to struggle in combat. His fights with Red Stick are touch and go and Davy almost loses his scalp in the middle of a battle. But it's diplomacy that finally wins the day and for the second third of the film Davy finds a new career in congress, a role prepped for him by the spread of his legend, courtesy of the faithful George.

At first an ally of the old General Jackson, Davy finds he must argue against him when Jackson plans to double-cross the Native Americans. The first part of this section presents a more hands on version of this drama when Davy must prevail in contests of shooting and fists when an Indian neighbour called Charlie Two Shirts (Jefferson Thompson) is run off his property by the dastardly Bigfoot Mason (Mike Mazurki). The fight choreography is okay but there's an appreciable quantity of ideas at work. Davy and Bigfoot hit each other and bash each other in creative ways and occasionally with props.

The final section is the Alamo and you know that can't end well. Still, it's a Disney film and a strong effort is made to keep it upbeat but the film stops short of lying about Crockett's fate. It's touching to see Davy's friends rally around him, including Captain Hook himself, Hans Conried, playing a cowardly gambler with an unmistakable voice.

I kept waiting for him to say, "Cod fish!"

Davy Crockett is available on Disney+.

Lost in a Lost City

A pious philanthropist is looking for a legendary lost city in the middle of the Sahara and only a guy named Joe January can get him there, if it exists. 1957's Legend of the Lost is an adventure film beautifully shot by Jack Cardiff with a great lead cast and intriguing dialogue by Ben Hecht and Robert Presnell. A beautiful prostitute who decides to tag along with the men completes the three points of tension driving the film's contemplation of morality.

Bland Italian actor Rossano Brazzi plays Paul, the philanthropist, who makes a nuisance of himself for the French authorities in Timbuktu when he starts handing out money freely in the streets. He even allows a woman named Dita to keep his pocket watch when she steals it--in gratitude, she returns his wallet, which he hadn't yet noticed missing.

Dita's played by Sophia Loren. I'm not sure what ethnicity she's supposed to be--when I google the name "Dita" results tell me it's an Albanian or a Spanish name. She also doesn't dress like any of the other women in the city. Maybe she's meant to be Italian? Anyway, Dita turns out to be one of the city's premier prostitutes, that is until Paul sits down and talks to her over a long night and convinces her to change her ways. Among those unconvinced of Paul's transformative powers is the guide he hires, a world weary American called Joe January played by John Wayne.

He's introduced making himself comfortable in a prison cell despite an open door and the fact that a shady Prefect (Kurt Kasznar) has already paid his bail. He wants no more "favours" from the Prefect since he's already two thousand in debt to him for prior arrests ordered by the same Prefect. This is just one of the amusing and effective ways Joe's canniness is established. When Paul finally lets him in on the true nature of their quest it's not 'til they've been travelling for some time in the desert--all Paul had told Joe before that point was that he was looking for his lost father's remains. Needless to say, Joe's faith in the city's existence isn't quite as firm as Paul's, but a job's a job and Joe continues so long as provisions hold out.

Trouble arises again when Dita shows up so the provisions for two now have to be split three ways. But along with the physical strain, a subtle ideological conflict starts to take hold. Dita has faith in Paul as her saviour, she unquestionably believes in the lost city. Joe only seems to have faith in food and water. What does Paul have faith in? Why is this already wealthy philanthropist seeking a city with gems as big as a fist?

I think the movie might have been stronger if we'd known exactly what it was Paul said to Dita to make her reassess her life and develop an admiration for him. But nonetheless the story is a thoughtful one about the usefulness of faith and why an incorporeal God may be a better subject for one's faith than a human being, even a dead human being like Paul's father. Which is not to say they don't find the city but naturally there are some action scenes in the climax.

Directed by Henry Hathaway and shot in Libya by Jack Cardiff, there are some splendid visuals, mostly actual location footage. But Cardiff's creative use of colour light makes even the soundstage stuff look fascinating. Legend of the Lost is available on Amazon Prime.

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A gadget glow induced a question time.
The passing cars inquire late of wheels.
A heavy glass supports a severed lime.
A flour forms a turning plate of meals.
A dusty space impounds the rusty ship.
For taxes paid a scrap of wood returned.
As faith in clustered pates does stead'ly dip.
A melted candle's ends yet firmly burned.
A crossing cat was fortune found in black.
Elusive floors began in cleaner states.
Entire trains retired 'long the track.
A flashing bar became the engine gates.
Roulette reclaimed the clock for plastic cash.
Inverted spheres revoked the dollar bash.